Has Rupert Murdoch declared war on Greece? After the Times 's latest sensational scoop, chronicling the ease with which two of its journalists breached Olympic security, many Greeks are asking just that.

The stunt, splashed and described in vivid detail in Friday's edition, is all the more graphic because Greeks had read all about it in equally vivid detail some 24 hours earlier. If the Athens government is to be believed, the two Times staff were picked up and arrested trying to prise their way into the main Olympic stadium long before they ever got inside.

Precisely because the arena is under construction - and resembles more of a building site than a venue - security is not yet in force and won't be until 1 July. Indeed, three days before the Times's intrepid attempts to break the 'Olympic ring of steel', I had taken the same route, walking across the car park and straight into the stadium, escorted by a Ghanaian gardener. It was broad daylight and the guardsman had waved us in, happily. All the details are in my notebook.

Following this month's embarrassing bombings, Olympic host Athens has got what it dreads most - a bad press. But no other group has covered Greece's perilous Olympic preparations as gleefully as News International.

Friday's Times continued the campaign, with a page three lead reporting Greek outrage - and implicitly justifying its own coverage - of the security 'lapse'.

Now that it has become part of the story - the public order minister formally protested to the British ambassador about the coverage on Thursday - Greeks are also asking whether this was the intention all along.

In the space of three weeks, the paper has carried more stories on the Greeks' modern Olympic drama than it has from its Athens correspondent over the past two months. Together, the Times and the Sun ran 45 stories in the first week of May.

Nothing unusual in that, one might think. After all, the Greeks it seems have gone out of their way to court criticism with preparations that, at times, have bordered on the burlesque. And, as the 5 May bomb blasts noisily brought home - exploding exactly 100 days before the start of the Games - the Greeks are in the final stretch of their seven-year quest to ready their ancient capital for its moment of modern glory.

Even now, construction delays persist with just half of the 39 sports venues up and running.

It's a good story that any decent journal would want to carry. But the Times has gone one step further. Last week, after inspectors from the International Olympic Committee heaped glowing praise on the progress the city had made, the paper's continued its withering criticism under the headline: 'Athens will be ready, but what about roads?'

In April, it splashed two of the 11 articles it ran on the Games on its front page. Both focused on security fears. Interestingly, editors felt fit to highlight the second report within 48 hours of the first. Curiously, both revealed very little that other US and British papers had not already published.

That notwithstanding, readers were told in a 17 April page 2 article that: 'The British ambassador met the Greek minister in charge of security at the Olympic Games yesterday after a series of revelations in the Times about security failures.'

Subsequently, both parties strenuously denied that the paper's revelations had been the reason for the pre-scheduled talks.

Earlier this month, the Times again splashed with a 4 May story on the saga of the signature sliding roof under construction at the main stadium. 'Greece given ultimatum on Olympic roof,' its headline screamed. On the same day, the Sun carried a similar piece entitled 'Olympic roof may be axed'. On 5 May Murdoch's Daily Telegraph (Sydney) also ran a column headlined 'roof vision sliding away. May 20 or scrap'. Interna tional Olympic Committee officials say there was never a specific ultimatum.

Athens' response has been to set up a media management crisis group of senior civil servants and journalists to deal with the 'anti-Hellenic' attacks.

'This is a country that loves conspiracy theories,' says Pavlos Tsimas, a highly regarded news anchor and print journalist. 'Personally, I hate them and do not subscribe to the view that the Times has a particular reason for running these reports; but still, they puzzle me. Frankly, they have crossed every line in objective reporting. There is room, of course, for critical reportage but what we have seen is highly exaggerated.'

International coverage of Athens' Olympic preparations has increasingly become a story in itself. Following this month's triple bomb blasts outside an Athens police station, almost every sin gle medium in Greece carried reports on what was widely viewed as the 'exaggerated reaction' of the world press.

Linking the minor explosions to the Olympic, rather than the marginalised extremists who have carried out around 90 similar attacks over the past year, was evidence of the 'anti-Greek' hysteria, most agreed.

'Terror hysteria going live around the world,' declared the mass-selling daily Ta Nea from its front page. 'Global delirium.' said the daily Ethnos.

But, once again, it was the Times 's coverage that rankled most. 'The bombs shattered attempts by the Greek government to reassure participating countries that security in Athens was adequate,' the paper wrote in its report on the attacks last Thursday. 'Indeed, the cost of insurance in case the Games are called off rocketed as a result of the pre-dawn explosions, the Times has learnt.'

Local media watchers have increasingly begun to wonder if the Times is harbouring some kind of vendetta against Greece. After all, they say, Athens is spending a record $1billion on mounting the biggest security operation in the 108-year history of the modern Olympics. Sydney, by contrast, spent less than a third of that amount - a fact that even the US press has praised.

'In some of its criticisms, the Times has a point,' says Pandelis Kapsis, editor of Ta Nea . 'But the overall impression the paper gives of the state of preparations is totally unfair. It's totally hyped up the security problem for example. Even when it quotes legitimate security concerns, it presents them as if they were the fault of Athens when New York would face similar problems if the Games were to take place there.'

Local belief that the Times might have a hidden agenda is rooted as much in its controversial front-page scoops as the fact that the paper is also involved in a court case for libel in Greece.

The civil action, which could result in the paper being ordered to cough up considerable damages, was brought by the lawyers and judges involved in the appeals court trial of the British planespotters arrested on spying charges in 2001.

On the eve of the verdict, the paper ran another front-page story suggesting that the enthusiasts' defence team had bribed the judges to cut a 'secret [£5,000] deal to free the Britons.'

'A secret deal freeing the British planespotters, facing jail for spying, was being considered by the judges last night,' the paper's correspondent wrote. 'They [the spotters] want the original sentences quashed, but have been told that the deal discussed when their lawyers entertained the judges last week is their best hope.'

The offending article - relocated to page 2 in later editions - was reprinted in the Greek media to stunned disbelief.

Enraged by its 'Johnny Foreigner is corrupt' tone, both the Greek judges and lawyers who were supposed to be bribing them, got together and slapped the paper with a writ. On 6 May, the drama moved to Athens' Court of First Instance after both parties failed to reach a settlement. Another hearing has been set for October.

What Greeks are also asking is can this case be Rupert's long-smouldering casus belli?